Frithjof Schuon

Frithjof Schuon was a Swiss philosopher and spiritual leader who lived from 1907 to 1998 and belonged to the Traditionalist School of Perennialism. He wrote more than twenty works in French on metaphysics, spirituality, religion, anthropology and art, and was also a painter and poet. Alongside René Guénon and Ananda Coomaraswamy he was one of the major twentieth century representatives of the philosophia perennis, affirming the reality of an absolute Principle, God, from which the universe emanates, and holding that all divine revelations, despite their differences, share one common Truth and that human beings are potentially capable of supra-rational knowledge. Initiated by Sheikh Ahmad al-Alawi into the Sufi Shadhili order, he founded the Tariqa Maryamiyya, and his writings stress the universality of metaphysical doctrine together with the necessity of practicing a religion and cultivating virtue and beauty. He kept close relationships with people of many religious and spiritual backgrounds, including a particular interest in the traditions of the North American Plains Indians that led to his adoption into both a Lakota Sioux tribe and the Crow tribe, and at the age of 73, after living much of his life in France and Switzerland, he moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where he gathered a community of disciples.